Best physical damage?

"3 harpoons wont out dps 3 traps ever. "

darn, I failed to convince you. oh well. enjoy the traps.

Hate to break it to you, but there is indeed a meta in the game right now, and for a reason. Not by popular demand, nor player choice, but because the game is structured in such a way that fosters it. People try using all defenses in NM builds occasionally, but rarely come out on top due to how the game is currently balanced. I do it all the time as well, but I always seem to come right back to the meta build. Why? Because it works, and it works the best by a fairly large margin. If you want to progress through NM1-4, there is very little wiggle room on what is viable and what is not. I'm sitting on NM2 gear right now - I could probably use other defenses in NM1, but if I wanted to progress through NM3, my build options are extremely limited.

Do I like that a single combination of towers trumps everything else in the game? Heavens no. Do I wish I could clear nightmare maps with earthshatters and training dummies? You betcha. Despite my wishes, that's not going to change the fact that explosives pump out way more damage per DU than any other defense in the game right now.

So since I climbed NM1-4 by using balista/dps build, I am a meta-breaker? 

Sweet!

I do doubt traps can outperform harpoons on a map like greystone plaza, where all 4 lanes have a nice straight shot for harpoons (except the right-most lane) but other maps have turns either in lane or the spawner where you can build 80 DU of traps and they'll hit everything at the same time.  In those scenarios traps should win.

It's a shame ballista isn't the top dog in the exact situation it might as well have been meant to be the best (straight lanes with no elevation changes) but I hope when the inevitable balancing happens they don't overtune it to the point traps wont be best in a killzone that's meant to be ~<600 units long

Really hope the balance of the game will revolve around tuning towers to be the best in certain scenarios.. windy paths (regular towers currently best concept here), straight paths (ballista), tight turns &short distances (traps), etc etc.. Could even do that with walls where one wall is best for wide lanes, another wall that's best for big creatures (small hit box so one big creature can melee at a time + lower hp than normal wall so a group of goblins would shred it - done enough ogre cheesing to know this would be an awesome wall to use strategically). 

That way, the guys who want to use traps can still use them, and other people who want to use others towers can use those too.  Just gotta find the right spots on maps to overcome their shortcomings or really exploit what they're good at.  So far, I can only really see traps and harpoons as super specialized towers for a specific purpose... hope we can get more towers like that

This whole meta debacle is mostly the result of the Hero Deck + Passive combo. 

Why don't you see more successful combos or at least the additions of various elements? Simply because you only have 4 heroes and must specialize each hero FOR ONE TASK. 

Nothing to argue here really. Want harpoons and walls? As giga pointed out you need to bring 2 squires, therefore you cannot also have a full set of 1 of each hero. Let alone 1 of each specialized hero. God help you if you want to build nm3 and bring dps/tank. Not going to happen.

Complain about the folly of the Hero Deck until it's removed...

I can't even get TE to explain what the heck the point of the thing is. A while ago it was something like: your matched in the tavern and vote on maps and then as a group pre plan who's doing what. Well, that isn't a valid reason anymore but the hero deck still exists. Also, solo was maybe getting more heroes but that never happened.

I'm at nm3 gear with 5 50s. Can't get enough gold to test things out without crazy hours grinding. Can't bring dps or tank to matches to have fun unless someone else builds something. Yeah, I settled for the 'meta' builds too because it's what's viable because someone at TE seems hellbent on limiting player tools and it drives me nuts that they wont(can't) explain why. 

@Satori quote:

This whole meta debacle is mostly the result of the Hero Deck + Passive combo. 

Why don't you see more successful combos or at least the additions of various elements? Simply because you only have 4 heroes and must specialize each hero FOR ONE TASK. 

Nothing to argue here really. Want harpoons and walls? As giga pointed out you need to bring 2 squires, therefore you cannot also have a full set of 1 of each hero. Let alone 1 of each specialized hero. God help you if you want to build nm3 and bring dps/tank. Not going to happen.

Complain about the folly of the Hero Deck until it's removed...

I can't even get TE to explain what the heck the point of the thing is. A while ago it was something like: your matched in the tavern and vote on maps and then as a group pre plan who's doing what. Well, that isn't a valid reason anymore but the hero deck still exists. Also, solo was maybe getting more heroes but that never happened.

I'm at nm3 gear with 5 50s. Can't get enough gold to test things out without crazy hours grinding. Can't bring dps or tank to matches to have fun unless someone else builds something. Yeah, I settled for the 'meta' builds too because it's what's viable because someone at TE seems hellbent on limiting player tools and it drives me nuts that they wont(can't) explain why. 

have to agree.  I hate being unable to have a slot to build just 1 tower to supplement my build.  It's all that tower or nothing because taking up 1 slot is to precious for just a "supplemental" slot. 

That makes it real hard to even challenge the meta since I can't do, for example, 6 traps + 1 ballista instead of 8 traps and go from there, baby steps until I've figured out the best position and am confident it'll work.  I've got to go and do 4 ballistas with no trap huntress in my deck at the time.  Then when I get my butt blasted I just go and say, welp ballistas suck. 

Also, <_< remember the hero deck hurts their monetization of the game.  Really lowers the value of additional hero slots when 6 is enough.  Oh, it did just dawn on me that then it would be a P2W feature?  I mean... i wouldn't mind it, but would they get flak for removing the hero deck and having additional heroes cost gems? :X

No, your right it does hurt monetization, it isn't p2w.

The paying of gems for hero creation already is in game.

Why the hell would I pay for more than 4 slots if I'm forced to swap gear/spheres mid game anyway? Bizarre.

i think one little tweak is necessary  and all would be fine, drop trap dps and increase their burst substantially so that they can actually act as traps and not towers you place in front of walls.... sigh... cant believe i even have to write this  D: - i mean this alone would have already solved the frost tower trap combi problem. Then maybe make towers less bursty and add a general slight dps increase and THEN !if necessary! rebalance maps according to THOSE changes- voila it's done ( well it is going to take months to get that all nice and dandy but thats why were still in alpha right?). people will build more towers on routes with heavy mobs and bosses, while traps can burst down big packs of small units.

or give more power to auras right now you get what 6% at t1? - 10% more dmg at T5? ( and my monk is full defense power) and 20% less dmg? but that is 540 GM expensive and only really worth it if you assist more than 6~10 towers at T5 ( which may be more likeely in NM - but I have no idea how much DU you'll have) 

but this is wild speculation right now - ill crunch some numbers when the servers are back up

Tho I'd also suggest a "cant affect traps" kind of thing if auras were to become better.

germanafro if by "auras" you meant monk Boost Aura, then: it shares a 10% (at tier 1) of your Monk's DP with a hero, whose towers are being affected. It still sucks. That could be solved by introducing a Boost % passives on all the other items or something, to spike that bonus DP substantially, to compete with Frostbite boost for traps.

And yes, i was proposing the idea of Boost Aura being the tower-only boost, while Frostbite could be the aura / trap only but the idea drowned somewhere deep under all the mud that people were spilling on Trendy and each other at that time (i want to think the majority have calmed down ever since - i've been away from forums for a short while).

All these things combined would put towers on a level where they could actually compete with traps. I can't wait for the changes to towers =) I know there are going to be some boosts for towers to match them with traps. At the moment, Nightmares 1 through 3 seem to be balanced about right around traps. Hence, towers need something to be as useful and to compete on the Nightmare stage.

Cheers,
Seph

@germanafro quote:

i think one little tweak is necessary  and all would be fine, drop trap dps and increase their burst substantially so that they can actually act as traps and not towers you place in front of walls.... sigh... cant believe i even have to write this  D: - i mean this alone would have already solved the frost tower trap combi problem. Then maybe make towers less bursty and add a general slight dps increase and THEN !if necessary! rebalance maps according to THOSE changes- voila it's done ( well it is going to take months to get that all nice and dandy but thats why were still in alpha right?). people will build more towers on routes with heavy mobs and bosses, while traps can burst down big packs of small units.

or give more power to auras right now you get what 6% at t1? - 10% more dmg at T5? ( and my monk is full defense power) and 20% less dmg? but that is 540 GM expensive and only really worth it if you assist more than 6~10 towers at T5 ( which may be more likeely in NM - but I have no idea how much DU you'll have) 

but this is wild speculation right now - ill crunch some numbers when the servers are back up

Tho I'd also suggest a "cant affect traps" kind of thing if auras were to become better.

whoah.  This is exactly what I don't want to happen

If you make their damage much lower they will never be used.  This is the wrong way to balance things.  Balance on towers' strengths and weaknesses, instead of making everything a tower can do weaker.  Traps have the smallest range of all towers - they SHOULD be the highest DPS towers out there if you can manage to place them in such a way that will minimize the area you need to kill everything.  They SHOULD outshine other towers in a lane that is shorter than 600-800 units.  That's what the trap is meant for.

High burst damage doesn't matter much between consistent damage by the way if the DPS is the same, take the difference of dmg/cooldown of explosive and elemental traps for example (until you get very long cooldowns involved... then that will suffer BADLY to stray goblins wasting tower potential, no matter how stupid high DPS there is). 

All that will matter is DPS in so far as you don't get severe overkill on the small creatures - wasting most of that DPS (as with most towers, especially cannonball + LSA in lower difficulties).  And in that regard, a high burst damage tower will be BAD against big packs of small units and GOOD against heavy mobs and bosses because much of the towers potential will be wasted on the goblins and not even kill them all because they wont be all in the tiny range.  Opposite to what you said

You want to increase the damage with a compensatory increase of cooldown in such a way to lower their DPS?  That's two nerf hits at once.  That's actually been the issue with a lot of balance changes that we've seen - lots of "over correcting" as someone else has said

What needs to happen is towers getting tuned to be good at what they're supposed to be good at.  Ballistas should be the best tower in long straight lanes with no elevation changes.  Traps should be best around tight corners which artificially shorten the length of the "lane" so to speak.  The cannon/flameburst tower should be good at overlooking curvy/windy paths that ballistas/traps can't take advantage of.  etctetctetctc

Gotta say I've been to to very endgame of DD2 every time they wiped It, except for now cause there are too many problems to handle every match to just play till NM4. But In all of those times I have never used anything but traps for physical damage. I don't think I ever even used balistas or cannons honestly outside of testing purposes.

@gigazelle quote:

@Omegaknight quote:

"Earthshatter and Ballista is so bad cause they have super high cost but do less damage than 2 traps -.-"

was waiting for someone to say this! It may seem that way but this is not true if you have the balista gear. Remember to add explody harpoon % to the overall dps because the game doesn't do that for you. The balista teir 1 has more dps than 2 traps even when both builds are complete. Also the balista hits more targets on average than traps do.

@Omegaknight quote:

Forgot to mention when using balista, you won't need an apprentice card. So you can swap that out for a dps!

Trust me, it's true even with all ballista passives. I have both the speedy harpoons and splody harpoons passives, and even with them on, they pale in comparison to two explosives. Compound that on top of frosty power, and you're looking at numbers almost double what any combination of any tangible tower can put out.

Plus, if you use ballista passives, that means your blockades are going to suffer - my spikes went from 105K to 55K without the hearty blockades passive on each piece. That's in no way a viable number for nightmare, leaving me with really no other choice than to use hearty blockades/frosty power/traps/skyguard.

I want to use ballistas, I really do - they are an awesome looking tower and I truly wish they were more viable. And, while the passives do help bring it up and out of the depths of 'worthless', it cannot compare to the effectiveness of traps + frosty power right now.

As for earthshatter... it's a complete joke right now.

So why not get a friend to bring the stuff you dont have in your hero deck, and then level a DH based squire (have 2 hero decks, one for solo play and one for co-op play) and also have a HH blockade squire. I.E "HH HB Squire", "DH based Ballista Squire", then you can focus on the correct stats (you can only focus obviously on one main stat on the important gear  *totem shield* the other one is diminished heavily on in the gear)  with all correct gear, *dat range is what makes ballista OP along with overlapping damage over traps for a good chance that they die and proc purge there and stop the horde,  as well as constant damage up until they get to traps, where as a trap along the way would only trigger while something is over it and this is assuming that you already have the shield trapped up, so those spots are taken thus using one DH based Splody squire harp per lane is very beneficial, its constant explosion aoe on up to 8 different mobs, constant aoe damage means there's a good chance one will die somewhere relatively quick due to the speedy stat, and if you're running Meta then they will explode in purge*  bring whatever else you and your friend want as long as you complete Meta.  4000+ explosion damage per target hit is possible if done correctly, hitting up to 8 targets, 3 or more of those explodes will all hit each other too, and with proper setup can easily sendout 32k  damage into a lane. By trying to make a "DH Splody Ballista Squire" on your "HB HH Squire", you're not doing it correctly. No offense. I know you're a good player because you have done lots for this community.